Starlight
by irishais
Summary: A string of inexplicable murders in Deling City leaves Galbadia Yard detective Seifer Almasy determined to unearth the secrets of the mysterious society called Garden. Steampunk AU, SeiferxQuistis.


_**starlight**_

_-irishais-_

_one: smoke gets in your eyes. _

Her perfume announces her entrance, and the rustle of silken skirts merely confirms it. He waits until she is just behind him, where the heady aroma envelopes him, nearly undoes him.

He turns, and offers her a fine crystal glass of champagne.

"What is that you're wearing?" he asks.

She smiles, her lips painted red, like she has tasted blood. Where did that thought come from?

"A lady never reveals her secrets," she says, and clinks her glass against his.

The music from the band playing on the street below floats up through the window, swelling and crashing over into the room.

She is startlingly beautiful, unlike anyone he has ever seen, with her golden hair piled atop her head. Her eyes are ice- it is silly to say that he loses himself in them, but he does, for a moment, and when she plucks his goblet from his fingers and sets it aside, drawing her gloved hand along his jaw and pulling his lips down to hers, he does not mind, not at all.

When he slips his hand underneath her skirt, the callouses of his fingers snag on the fine mesh of her stockings. He fumbles, apologizes, and she laughs, the sound of bells. He slips a finger in the hole, touching the soft skin of her thigh.

She tastes of mint and champagne, and the combination is overwhelming.

Her hand glides down the front of his shirt, over his heart, and her touch is electric.

She whispers something in his ear.

It doesn't register until the electricity spreads from under her hand, firing across his chest cavity and radiating out into his limbs, until he is frozen with the force of it. His breathing comes in short, shallow gasps,

"What have you done?" It is nearly impossible to speak, and the words sound muffled in his ears. There is a copper taste in his mouth; blood foams and bubbles up over his lips, dripping into his lap.

_What have you done?_

She places a soft kiss upon his brow, and then turns away, her peach-colored gown blurring into indistinction, a smear of color and a golden halo.

She is gone.

It is his last thought as the lightning blows up his heart.

_xx_

"It's done," she says, stepping into the carriage, a handful of skirt in her grasp. The night is cool and clear, and once the carriage door is shut, she draws the curtain back to let in some air. By the faint illumination of gas lamps lining the street, she sees Squall's face, schooled into careful neutrality.

"It went well?"

"As well as can be expected. My charm made him nervous." She laughs a little, and Squall only nods once, acknowledging the completion of assignment. "I take it nothing went awry out here?"

"Nothing that couldn't be easily handled."

Which meant either something needed to be handled or nothing at all had happened. Squall's tone is a study in contradictions and impossibilities. Quistis sighs and rests her chin upon her gloved hand, watching Deling's streets go by in a rush.

"You'll have a few days off after this," he adds.

"Finally."

There is only so much of this that she can take before it starts to wear on her, and Garden knows it. They have been pushing her these past few weeks, especially in Deling, where Caraway's reach is long and the night is so short.

"I'll need a new pair of stockings. The bastard ruined these," she says finally, when the silence gets to be too much- and around Squall Leonhart, the silence is always, always just a little too much for her to bear.

"Put it on your report. The headmaster will reimburse you."

"That will take forever."

Squall snorts, softly, and reaches into his pocket, withdrawing a crisp note. Quistis tucks it into the neckline of her gown.

"Thank you."

He shrugs- he has a whole vocabulary of shrugs. Quistis thinks, not for the first time, that perhaps her partner needs a hobby.

_Or a female companion_. She does not ever say this bit out loud. What her superior officer does in his private life is exactly that.

The carriage arrives at the train station not a moment too soon, and Quistis waits until the driver has come around to open the door, taking his hand for balance as she steps out. Wind plays with the netting on her hat, and she absently brushes it back out of her face.

Squall descends. She admires the cut of his tuxedo and the sheen of the light on his top hat as he places it back on his disheveled hair. He always manages to look a bit roguish, no matter what Garden puts him in.

He extends his elbow to her and she places her hand in the crook of it, and together, they sweep up the stairs to the platform, the very picture of Deling society, leaving no one the wiser as to what destruction they leave in their wake.

_xx_

_Scratch, flare, inhale._

He uses the fancy woodwork of the armrest of his seat to light the match, and the cigarette, when he takes a draw from it, is strong against his tongue. Seifer Almasy inhales deeply, and watches the passengers board. Not terribly many of them at this hour- this is the last train that will stop in Deling City until the morning, and if it weren't for the woman waiting on him in Balamb, he would have already disembarked, gotten a tumbler of decent quality scotch, and put his head on the first pillow that made itself available to him.

However, obligations are obligations, and so now he is here, people-watching in the only way a Galbadia Yard detective can, noting details and distinguishing marks- the man sleeping in the seat across from him, his rumpled mis-buttoned vest indicating a visit to one of Deling's many pleasure houses or a mistress he's too embarrassed to keep in the same town. The fine couple boarding, a man in a well-cut tuxedo and a beautiful woman in a peach gown that does her figure every justice, the child crying the muted wail of the exhausted, held tight to her mother's- or her nanny's, if the dress has anything to say about it- bosom.

Seifer lets his eyes linger on the woman in peach as she sits, her face obscured by the veil of netting on her hat. She makes no indication of noticing him, and Seifer flicks his eyes away, taking another deep drag on his cigarette. Deling City, the land of privilege and sin.

Not for the first time, he wonders if maybe he should leave the Yard and take up residence with his fish-mistress in Balamb. She would love that, and he wouldn't have to make this godforsaken journey every week or so.

He smokes.

And, not for the first time, he comes to the inevitable conclusion that he would go absolutely insane if he stayed in Balamb any longer than necessary, with nothing to do but listen to the woman he has no intent of marrying prattle on in his ear.

The train's horn lets out a mournful tone, and slowly it pulls away from the station, chugging on into the night.

_xx_

"We need a private car," Quistis says after a while, lapsing into Estharian as they are wont to do when in mixed company. "That man won't stop leering at me."

Squall glances casually over his shoulder, masking it as a stretch. "Yard," he says.

"You think so?"

He nods. "Although it's probably more to do with your dress than anything else."

She swats his knee with her glove. "You're so crude."

Squall raises an eyebrow at her, and she chuckles as she studies the Yardsman out of the corner of her eye. Tall, in trim form as far as she can tell under his rumpled coat and tilted hat, light hair and eyes that probably don't miss very much at all.

The Yard and Garden aren't so very different in their training, after all, it seems. She files his face away in her mind, and the train races onward.


End file.
